Settling In...

Howdy doody!

Things are beginning to slow down. No, I lied. I think they're actually starting to speed up. I took my placement test yesterday. The written part was hen nan (very difficult), but I thought that the oral went very well. Today we got a tentative placements and I'm in 150, which is not as high as I expected. At first I was a bit upset about it, but once its sunk in, I realize that my speaking ability/confidence is nowhere where it should be, so, this will be good.

Last night we sojurned out to Wangfujing Dajie. It's a street with lots of glisty lights and stores that arent so cheap. At the end of the street was a night market which served delacies. It was quite interesting to see scorpions wiggling on a skewer.






To get to Wangfujing Dajie, we had to take the ditie (subway). That is when I learned that my school faaaaaaaaaaaaarrr away from that essential mode of transportation. We are about a 25-minute walk away. That doesnt make me happy, BUT, there are two ways to get there. One which is a straight shot with no hustle bustle. And the other with this in the way:

Random dancing/flag twirling/tangoing in front of the Russian convention center at about 9pm at night. Not for tourists, just for kicks. It was quite interesting and refreshing to see, despite our long walk!

I also found this on Wangfujing Dajie. Ironically, it is in the bottom of the hotel that I have decided that my parents MUST stay at.

I met my roommate about an hour ago. Her name is Zhang Haiyan (Jong Hi-yan). Zhang is her last name, and I her first name is Haiyan. She's very sweet and very willing to help me. Her english is great, but that wont matter come Monday when the 24-hour "language pledge" kicks into gear.

I don't think she moves in officially until the 28th, but I'm not 100% sure on that given my chinese skills (or lack there of). Only thing I'm worried about is that she'll be around ALL the time and will want to talk/practice. That's nice... and not. Sometimes you just don't know what to talk about, right? Anyways, it shall be a great getting-out-of-the-box experience.

She's in a meeting right now with the other roommates and should get out soon. After that we're required to take our roommates out to dinner to mingle. fun fun.

The food: not so bad. People told me it would be very different from what I'm used to, but I havnt been shocked/estonished/appalled yet. The veggies swim in oils, the meats have a lot of fat connected to them, and we get watermelon with every meal from our "cafeteria." Its not bad yet. They offer us PB&J every meal as well, so I can always fall back onto that need be.

Thanks for reading/skimming.

Zaijian.